You may wonder, as I did: If the sadness and self-loathing hurt so much, why I didn't resort to liquor and tranquilizers (the new drugs were not then available) to cut the pain? I didn't do so, even during the worst half-year or year at the beginning, for two reasons: First, I felt that I had no "right" to use artificial gimmicks to escape from the pain because I felt it was my own fault. Second, I was afraid that tranquilizers or other drugs would interfere with the one part of me that I continued to respect, my ability to have ideas and think clearly. Without explicitly recognizing it, I acted as if the only possible avenue of escape for me, in the short run and the long run, was to be able to think well enough to involve myself in some work for a while every day, and maybe eventually to do enough useful work to bring about self-respect. Booze or pills could ruin that avenue of hope, I thought.

All those years I concealed my depression so that no one except my wife knew about it. I was afraid to seem vulnerable. And I saw no benefits in revealing my depression. When occasionally I hinted about it to my friends, they did not seem to respond, perhaps because I did not make clear how badly off I really was.

In December, l974, I told the family physician that I had reduced my possibilities of happiness to "two hopes and a flower." One of the hopes was a book which I hoped would make an important contribution to people's thinking and perhaps to some government policies. I worried that the book was not written in a sufficiently attractive manner to make any impact, but it was one of my hopes anyway. The second of my hopes was that sometime in the future I'd write a book about how to think, how to use one's head, how to use one's mental resources, in such a way as to make the best use of them. I hoped that that book would put together a lot of what I've done and what I know into a new and useful form. (As of 1990, I have finished a first draft of that book, having worked on it last year and this year.)

The flower was a flower that I often looked at while I was meditating. In that meditation I could let everything go and feel that there is absolutely no "ought" of obligation upon me-- no "ought" to continue meditating, no "ought" to stop meditating, no "ought" to think about this or to think about that, no "ought" to telephone or not to telephone, to work or not to work. The flower was for that moment an enormous relief from "ought," the flower that demanded nothing yet offered great beauty in quiet and peace.

About 1971, give or take a year, I decided that I wanted to be happy. I had figured out that one cause of my depression was my self-punishment for what I felt were my bad deeds, in the superstitious belief that if I punished myself this might ward off other people's punishment. And I then concluded that I no longer felt the need to be unhappy as a way of punishing myself. So, the first thing that happened in this sequence of events was that I decided explicitly that I wanted to be happy.

Starting perhaps 1972, I tried a variety of devices to break through my depression and give me happiness. I tried Zen-type concentration on the moment to prevent my thoughts from slipping to anxious memories of the past or anxious fears about the future. I tried think-happy exercises. I tried breathing exercises, separately and also together with concentration exercises. I started a list of "good things that I can say about myself" in those moments when I felt low and worthless and devoid of self-esteem, to pep myself up. (Unfortunately, I only managed to get two things down on the list: a) My children love me. b) All students who have done theses with me respect me, and many continue our relationship. Not a very long list, and I never managed to use it successfully. None of these schemes helped for more than half a day or a day.)

Starting in the summer or fall of 1973, a revolution lasting one day each week came into my life. An Orthodox Jewish friend of mine told me that it is one of the basic precepts of the Jewish Sabbath that one is not allowed to think about anything that will make him or her sad or anxious during that day. This struck me as an extraordinarily good idea, and I tried to obey that rule. I tried to obey it not because of a sense of religious dictate, but rather because it seemed to me a wonderful psychological insight. So on the Sabbath I have tried to act in ways that would keep me thinking in a friendly and happy manner, ways such as not allowing myself to work in any way, not think about work-connected things, and not letting myself be angry with the children or other people no matter what the provocation.

On this one day a week -- and only on this one day of the week--I found I could usually fend off depression and be content and even joyful, though on the other six days of the week my mood ranged from gray to black. More specifically, on the Sabbath if my thoughts tended to drift toward things which were unhappy, I tried to act like a mental street-sweeper, using my broom to gently deflect my mind or sweep away the unpleasant thoughts, and to nudge myself back to a pleasanter frame of mind. The fact of knowing that there was one day in which I would do no work probably was itself very important in alleviating my depression, because an important factor in my depression has been my belief that my hours and days should be devoted entirely to work and to the duty of work. (It's worth noting that I've often had to struggle to keep myself from being depressed on the Sabbath, and sometimes the effort of the struggle seemed so great that it just wasn't worth it to keep struggling, but rather seemed easier just to give myself over to the depression.)

After that I'm not sure exactly in which order things happened. Starting September, 1974, the work-load felt lighter than for many years. (Of course my work-load is largely self- imposed, but deadlines felt less pressing.) Starting in 1972, I began no new works, and instead tried to finish up all the things which were in my pipeline so as to get my desk clear. And starting in September, 1974, the various books and articles and research that I had in process were, one by one, getting done. From time to time, of course, I was jerked up short by a new set of proofs or a new deadline for something that I had set in motion a long time before. But for the first time in a very long time there were at least some interludes during which I felt unrushed and free. I also had the feeling that I really was approaching that nirvana when I really would be very free, and able to feel a sense of relaxation. But still I was depressed-- sad, and full of self-loathing.